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Global giving grows

Private giving to the developing world surged in 2010 in the wake of the global recession, a new report says.

Global philanthropy, remittances and private capital investment grew to $575 billion in 2010, up from $455 billion a year earlier, and accounted for 82 percent of the developed world’s economic dealings with developing countries, says The Index of Global Philanthropy and Remittances 2012, a report from the Center for Global Prosperity at the Hudson Institute.

Government aid, which grew to $128 billion, up from $119.8 billion in 2009, represented only 18 percent of total “financial flows” to developing countries.

Private capital investment in development countries grew to $329 billion from $228 billion, while remittances from developed countries to the developing world grew to $190 billion from $174 billion.

Total philanthropy from donor countries to developing countries grew to $56 billion, up $3 billion.

Total U.S. private funding to the developing world grew to $326.4 billion from $226.2 billion in 2009.

That included philanthropy from the U.S., which grew to $39 billion from $37.5 billion; remittances, which grew to an estimated $95.8 billion from $ 90.5 billion; and private capital flows, which grew to $161.2 billion from $69.2 billion and account for nearly half of U.S. total economic engagement with the developing world, the report says.

While government aid grew to $30.4 billion from $28.8 billion in 2009, it represents only 9 percent of U.S. total economic engagement with the developing world.

New forms of giving “are poised to change the face of international philanthropy and global foreign aid as we know it today,” Carol C. Adelman, director of the Center for Global Prosperity, says in the report.

The report says new data from the World Bank “found a broad reduction in poverty around the world and confirmed that contrary to predications by the World Bank itself, the global recession did not reduce poverty in developing countries.”

The share of individuals in “extreme poverty,” or those living on less than $1.25 a day, the report says, fell in every developing region between 2005 and 2008 and, according to preliminary data from 2010, has not increased, report says.,

And the share of individuals living in extreme poverty fell to 22 percent in 2008 from 52 percent in 1981, it says.

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